


All Hallow's Eve

by Pikkulef



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-01-28 12:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12606856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pikkulef/pseuds/Pikkulef
Summary: Random ficlet from @GrumpyQueer's idea.I have no idea where it's going and how long it will last. As usual, haha.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings : *
> 
> *This AU somehow still takes place after the end of S4. YES THAT MEANS THIS, sorry  
> *Death of a major character   
> *Mention of death at all, somehow probably too lightly for some people’s taste  
> *Body horror   
> *Ed is an arse to his friend as usual.

In the dark light of a late afternoon, the door of Whitechapel police station crashed open in front of Edmund Reid, his coat flowing behind him.   
  
“Is he here at last ?”  
Sergeant Atherton turned owly eyes towards his superior.   
“Yes, sir, he has arrived. With -   
The sergeant couldn’t continue his sentence as the inspector was suddenly taken by a series of strong sneezes.   
So strong, in fact, that his bowler flew to the floor.   
  
After a while, shaken, still sneezing, Reid limply picked up his beloved hat, and held out à hand towards a thin stick that was producing lazy curls of heavy white smoke on the counter. Between two bursts, he was able to say, in a voice that was more of a growl:   
“What in all life and death is this thing ?”   
The tone alone stated that whatever this thing was, it would have to be destroyed sooner rather than later.   
“It’s…” Fear made the sergeant stutter. “It’s incense, sir. Bought it from that indian bazaar at the turn of Brick Lane.   
"Throw this. Throw this away, NOW.   
"B-but sir ! It keeps bad spirits away, inspector ! And it’s All Hallow’s Eve ! A dangerous time to be dealing with -  
"Atherton, if you don’t throw this away right now, it’s MY bad spirits you will have to deal with !”  
While the growl had faded from his voice as the sneezing had gradually stopped, the sudden orange flash in the inspector’s eye, on par with him baring an impressive set of canines, quickly set Atherton in motion.   
  
The sergeant opened the door wide, and all the windows to let fresh air in, then threw his burning stick in a bin on the street.   
He did however hide the remaining twigs under his jacket, casting à dark eye at the inspector as Reid walked down to the morgue.


	2. Chapter 2

The inspector pushed the door to the morgue open, and it felt like all warmth from upstairs had been suddenly drained from him. 

While the station hall was lit with regular electric lamps, colouring the air in orangey tones, everything down there was drenched in a cold, barely luminous enough blue halo. 

But he was used to the eccentricities of his surgeon ; most of the cold he felt had washed on him as he had seen what, or rather who, lied on the table. He stepped in, respectuously staying silent and motionless, eyes cast down. However, he almost jumped when the door clicked closed behind him, and turned, teeth bared. 

“Is it already time for your  _monthly inconvenience_ , then, Inspector ?” Jackson snickered, his drawling voice echoing against the white walls where the blue flames of the enchanted gaz lamps played with heavy shadows.   
“I know you keep a calendar, Jackson. Enough with this.” The growl was back in Reid’s voice, deep and menacing. Jackson took a puff off his cigarette, but he was not grinning as usual. The blue light did wonders to hide the pallid, lifeless colours of his hollow cheeks. 

The same colour as their friend. The sergeant Drake was laid down in his best suit, inert, on the table. Both Jackson and Reid were instinctively speaking in a lower voice than usual, yet the shock of his death had passed, after a few days of mourning. Now was the time for decisions. 

“Are you sure that this is what you want ?”  
Jackson walked near the body on the dissection table. He had spent the last remaining hours of the night before stiching up a big gap in Drake’s neck, but that left his head in a weird crooked position. That would not be a problem  _per se_ later, but it would be an inconvenience. 

“I need him. I need him to stop this man. This  _man_ , Jackson. Not even a ghoul -   
  
“- nor a werewolf as he claims -” Jackson darted his dark eyes up to Reid, and cast them down on Drake again, barely hiding a vicious grin. 

“Not even  _that.”_ The inspector’s voice was usually already quite deep, but there, any living person could have felt his last words resonate in their chest. However, aside from him, there were none in this room. 

“I need him to help me catch this… this monster.  
“Oh, hell, just saying you missed him would have been fine - and true.” Jackson quickly changed subject as Reid opened his mouth. “How long until you disappear ?” Noticing how the inspector had been passing his tongue on what could be deemed fangs during all their conversation, Jackson tilted his head towards the window, where the darkness was passing from blood red to deep purple. Something cracked. “Ouch.” It took both his hands to crack his neck again to put his head back in place. 

Meanwhile, Reid looked at his watch.   
“A couple of hours. Not much more. Do we have to do this tonight ? Tomorrow would have been -   
“Tonight is the night of all nights, Reid, you know this as well as I do. Besides, I need him to be as fresh as possible. You don’t want him constantly rotting in the office next to yours, do you ? By the way, did you talk to his wife about this ?    
“She was…” Reid squirmed. “… nowhere to be found. That’s why I sent you alone to the cemetery.   
“And to avoid being caught robbing graves, yeah. By all that’s living and dead, fuck that, Reid, you’ll be the one dealing with Rose when she discovers Benito’s back against his will. Let it be known you insisted on this and I was against it.” He started setting candles around the dissection table in a complex fashion.

“But, Jackson, don’t you -   
“Don’t get all heated up, Reid, of course I miss him and I’m really sad, but I think it’s cruel to revive a warm that was so disgusted at the idea of life beyond death, you know.” Jackson continue setting the candles. The act itself he had done countless times, yet it felt weird doing so on Drake.    
“He is not a religious man.”    
“Was.” Jackson pointed a finger. To Reid’s wince of disgust, the finger detached itself and fell on the ground with a flat sound. Rolling his eyes and sighing, Jackson picked it up and put it back in place, attaching it back again by muttering a spell under his breath. He went on. “This has not worked yet. And he was religious, more than you at least. Just not the usual for a servant of Her Majesty. Hopefully this will work for us. This goddess of his - she will help." 


	3. Chapter 3

Jackson used Reid’s contribution to move some objects, bring more candles, and settle them again in a scientific fashion around the dissection table. He himself was taking notes from a variety of books that he had laid on the tiled counter. One of the books offered a reproduction of a painting representing an Egyptian goddess with a lion head, brandishing weapons.

As the hour passed, the inspector grew more on edge, got startled by every sound coming from outside – some barely audible for Jackson. He was still doing what Jackson told him to, but he talked less and less and visibly, gradually hunched. When he almost bit the surgeon’s hand just as it flew next to him to light yet another candle, Jackson sighed.   
“Enough.”   
Reid would probably have bitten him for real if he had been warm. But there was no blood nor life to take in Jackson’s body, and he probably smelled bad enough to repel him. “I think it’s time for you to go. I can go on alone. You’ll just make a mess.”  
The inspector was visibly fighting the beast taking over him, but he was unable to answer. He simply stood in the middle of the newly lit candles, shaking his head.   
“No, really, Reid. Piss off. Go chain yourself somewhere before you go on a rampage and mess up the few leads we have on this fake werewolf.”   
This had the intended effect on Reid. He walked towards the door, opened it, and produced a short yell with a raspy voice:   
“HOBBS!”   
Slowly, a dark figure raised from the depth of the corridor, and walked towards Reid. The inspector was fiddling with a silver chain he kept around his neck, taking it off. Without a word, he presented it to the pale, wide eyed constable who stopped next to him. The constable’s young face was a little vacant, his eyes unfocused and cloudy.   
Pausing, Reid turned towards Jackson inside, and gestured towards Hobbs.   
“Not. Like him.”   
Jackson rolled his eyes and sighed again.   
“Will you leave me alone with that? Errare humanum est, Reid. Well, at least I used to be.” Jackson put a new cigarette between his lips and lit it up by clicking his fingers. A blue flame appeared and died. “That’s why it has to be done tonight. Drake hasn’t spent days in water, he should be okay. Now off you go. I’ll have Hobbs fetch you up in the morning.”

Reid turned back to Hobbs, who now had his hand held out and a slight frown on his face. The inspector suddenly wondered what the constable was able to pick from their conversations. Enough, it seemed. Reid put the silver key in Hobbs’ hand, and followed him to the station basement when the constable started walking, more of a slow limp.

He had a last look at his sergeant, laid on the dissection table, surrounded by the white flames of a few dozen of candles.


	4. Chapter 4

Jackson sighed. Now that he was finally alone without Reid to spy from over his shoulder, he would be able to do a better work. Better than with Hobbs, he hoped. He lit another cigarette, and peered at the books he had left lying on the counter. 

The lights, though enchanted, flickered as a long, painful howl rose from the dephts of the station. Maybe it was  _because_ they were enchanted. Jackson winced and shuddered at the sound, and put all the lights out at another flick of his fingers. 

Only the candles remained. In their dim, pale light, he read the words in the language of the old gods. He had to call the goddess in her own, ancient words - words that could please her. However, he didn't know this language. These words were hard on his tongue. But he tried, over and over again. 

His voice became hoarse, his throat sore. A feeling he had not experienced for a long, long time. 

There was a sudden, distinctly musky, animal smell in the room. Jackson turned around, grumbling.   
"Now, Reid, come on, you shouldn't -"  
He was alone. The door was closed, the room empty, save for Drake on the table. As to confirm his budding thought, a new howl rattled the lights, stronger, angrier; but still, held deep in the police station.   
As he looked away from his friend's lifeless body, he felt a sudden gust of hot, scorching wind in his face. With it, the smell of life decaying under the sun, of blood soaked sand. 

He smiled. 

_She_ was there.    
  


_He was made of sand. He_ was _sand. Blood and matters clung to his face and felt like baking as he walked under the sun. Blood of his ennemies. Blood of his friends. He did not know. He was sand, and sand drank the blood. It had no regards as to where it came from._

_A movement at the brink of his vision triggered his reflexes. Atop the next dune, an animal, barely distinguishable from the sand, until it climbed all the way up, and was revealed against the sky. Its muzzle and paws were drenched a deep red, almost purple. It looked at him with amber eyes.  
Slowly, he laid his weapons on the sand. He had become sand, and sand had no weapons. It only drank blood, elixir of life and death. _

_For an eternity, they looked at each other, unbliking, under the white hot sun. Recognizing each other as kin._

_Finally, the lioness flicked its ears, then slowly turned around and left, its tail writhing._

_Not this time._

_Again._

Scorching wind and sand filled his lungs. The smell of blood filled his nose. Harsh, white light filled his eyes.   
Then, a drawling voice he didn't instantly recognize was in his ears.   
"Welcome back, Benito !" 

 


End file.
